Sandra Kolstad

Sandra Kolstad’s electronic pop music has given her distinct voice attention and praise from the Norwegian and international music scene. She is currently preparing her new album, Burning Love. With a taste for conceptual albums, this time Kolstad has laid her interest on the ups and downs of desire, and the ideas of a love that can make us blind to red flags and black holes. Some of life’s worst wounds can come from these intense flames. The term Burning Love also points to the work needed to heal from damaging relationships. It evokes images of renewal and rising like a phoenix from the ashes. In the making of the album, Kolstad has used her own experiences and transformed them into strong, yet vulnerable works about pain and finding a way out. Kolstad uses the distinct world of modular synthesizers to create a warm, yet distant, stringent and floating soundscape. On the album she exposes a brighter, more poppy side to herself – at the same time she’s more experimental than ever before.
Kolstad is the classically trained pianist who stormed into the Norwegian electronic pop scene with authority when she released her debut album. CRUX received rave reviews, including Aftenposten (Norway’s most widely circulated newspaper), who wrote that "Norway has finally gained a worthy front figure for electronic music." The daily newspaper proclaimed her "Norway's new electronic pop queen". Since then, Kolstad has released three records: (Nothing) Lasts Forever (2012), Zero Gravity State of Mind (2014) and San Silva (2017). The first two gave her radio slots in Norway and abroad, as well as playing some of Scandinavia’s most prestigious summer festivals like Roskilde and Øyafestivalen. When Kolstad released San Silva in 2017, many critiques meant it was Kolstad’s best work to date.